


fear is the heart of love. and I should’ve saved you.

by angelica_barnes



Series: ABC [4]
Category: Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Healing, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Insecurity, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Moving On, Multi, Past Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 07:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15432189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: D : death.a look into Hannah's thirteen reasons why thirteen years down the road.(year one is the hardest.and it gets easier, but it's never easy.)(some of them will never learn to live with it.)





	fear is the heart of love. and I should’ve saved you.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" by Death Cab For Cutie and "Forest Fire" by Brighton
> 
> I've only ever read the book so this is in no way connected to the TV show. Jenny Kurtz is the cheerleader who crashed into the stop sign if you're wondering

**1.**

 

The first year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay talks to Skye Miller. Every day, without fail, and she starts to open up. She smiles at him in the halls, and for a while he worries that she’ll fall in love with him, because he’s still hung up in Hannah and he suspects he may always be, no matter how twisted the sending of those tapes was.

Turns out he has nothing to worry about, as she’s kissed by Justin Foley two weeks before graduation under the maple tree out in front of the school. They try and make it work long distance, and Clay roots for them.

He’s glad someone’s found love in all of this mess.

 

**2.**

 

The second year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay finally works up the guts to talk to Tony again. It’s been so long since that night, when they drove around, and he knows that he owes him, owes Tony a life for saving Clay’s. Not that he thought about giving up, that day. But you don’t need to think about something to do it.

Mr. Porter comes to school haunted every day up until the end of the year. He got the tapes over the summer, Clay thinks, if he’s got his timeline right, and so when the English teacher suddenly doesn’t return and there are rumors of resignation, Clay is anything but surprised.

There are twelve more people who gather outside on the sidewalk to watch him go - no Bryce, of course. But Tony.

His shoulder is comforting presence, pressed against Clay’s.

 

**3.**

 

The third year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay graduates. His parents cry and take too many photographs, and Tony hugs him goodbye. Skye thanks him, smile bright and hands warm in his, and when she sees Justin in the crowd, she runs to him, and Clay watches them with a soft smile.

Bryce Walker comes up behind him with a smirk and says, deep and low, that he’d sure wanna “tap that”. Clay doesn’t spare him a glance, but rushes away, to find his parents.

They hand him his phone when he asks for it and he dials 911. He tells them in hushed tones about Bryce, walking away from his parents all the while.

As he hangs up, he runs straight into Tony, and he smiles to let him know it’s over.

 

**4.**

 

The fourth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay sees no one from his high school. The college he’s picked is unique to any of his classmates’ choices, and it takes him awhile to figure out how he feels about that. Sad, sort of. Indifferent, mostly.

Not much happens, but on New Year’s Eve, he’s at a party, locked in one of the many bathrooms, curled in the bathtub and thinking about that night with Hannah. He still remembers, all these years later, how her lips felt against his. Soft as velvet, gentle as hands.

 

**5.**

 

The fifth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, he sees them again. Tony comes to pick him up for summer break, give him a ride home to his parents’. They’re in a cardboard box, the Walkman settled on top, in Tony’s backseat. He and Clay are laughing over some joke in the parking lot of a roadside McDonald’s when the latter catches sight of them and seems to forget how to breathe.

He stares, eyes unfocused, until Tony touches one of his trembling hands and Clay surges forward and kisses him.

 

**6.**

 

The sixth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay buys his own apartment near campus. Collecting his mail one day, he runs into a couple, talking with matching grins and an engagement ring on the girl’s finger, and when they see him staring, they immediately quiet, staring right back.

For a moment, that’s all they do. And Clay notices that neither of them have changed much - they look healthier.

He lifts his hand and waves, as way of truce. Alex Standall and Jessica Davis wave back, their shocked faces slowly melting into smiles, and Clay turns his back and walks away.

 

**7.**

 

The seventh year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Marcus Cooley appears on Clay’s TV while he’s flitting through channels. He blinks, then blinks again, not quite believing what he sees, but it’s him. Marcus Cooley, class clown, now a big-shot late night TV-show host.

He’s got a wedding ring on. Clay looks him up. He married Tyler Down - makes sense. Two perverts. Clay’s still disgusted with both of them, but at the very least they’ve moved on. And Hannah said she forgave most of them, so he guesses it’s not his call to make, but still, the idea of such disgusting people finding happiness is a little too much for Clay to stomach.

He calls up Tony and asks him to come home. Tony ditches class and does.

 

**8.**

 

The eighth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay’s wandering around a Barnes & Noble when he finds a book with the name Ryan Shaver neatly imprinted on its cover. He stares at it until Tony comes to find him. He takes one look at the book in Clay’s hands and hands him a twenty-dollar bill - that’s how much it costs. They stay up all night reading it.

It’s good. Really good. Hannah wasn’t kidding when she said he’d been famous for his words one day. He is now, and for good reason, and before they put it down, they check the  _ About The Author _ section, just to see where their former classmate might be.

Ryan mentions Hannah. He also mentions Zach Dempsey - his partner of about three years, it says, and Clay shuts the book then, realizing that Tony’s asleep on his chest.

He turns off the lights and closes his eyes, allowing himself some blissful silence and some wondering.

 

**9.**

 

The ninth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay goes back home to introduce Tony to his parents. He doesn’t see himself moving on from this, just like he never saw himself moving on from Hannah, and most of his thoughts now revolve around making this work out better than he and Hannah did.

While they’re there, Clay relaxing on the couch with his mom and Tony in the kitchen with Clay’s dad, the two of them chatting about god knows what (probably cars), another face that Clay knows appears on the TV screen - two, in fact.

With his scream, muffled only slightly by his hand, Tony rushes over and Clay’s dad follows, and they listen in stunned silence about the jailbreak of Bryce Walker and the suicide of Jenny Kurtz.

They have no explanation this time.

 

**10.**

 

The tenth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay and Tony drive down to the Hannah’s graveyard. They’re not the only ones, it seems, as Jessica and Alex are there, both with rings this time, and so are Zach and Ryan, staring at the tombstone with pale faces. Marcus and Tyler are sitting on the floor in front of the headstone, both with legs criss-crossed and seemingly scared of moving even an inch. Justin’s there too, alone, without Skye, but with a wedding ring and Courtney Crimsen’s not smiling for once in her life. Clay swears he sees a shadow behind a nearby tree, and for a moment he tricks himself into thinking it might be Bryce, but he knows better. He wouldn’t risk coming this close to somewhere they could find him.

Mr. Porter, face ashen, is behind them all.

None of them look up as Clay and Tony approach, hand in hand, but they feel the shadow lording over them all as they huddle around her grave, united only by the knowledge of truths unspoken to the rest of the world, the burden theirs to carry alone.

 

**11.**

 

The eleventh year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay and Tony start a charity for suicide and start working side by side in suicide hotline centers. They talk about Hannah, and Jenny, all around the country, and it’s at one of their conventions, with a guilty looking face, that Bryce Walker is caught again and taken back to jail. He never takes his eyes off them even as the security guards drag him away, and Clay stops speaking, staring right back. Tony’s hand is warm in his.

That same year, they help Courtney Crimsen with her campaign. She becomes a Senator and thanks them for their support, and works especially hard to raise awareness for suicidal teens with her strengthening influence. Clay and Tony are by her side for most of it.

This time, when Courtney talks about being kind to others, her voice is strained, but it’s the most genuine they’ve ever seen her.

 

**12.**

 

The twelfth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Tony and Clay get married in a short ceremony at the city hall in New York. It’s nothing special, and they don’t want anything of the sort, they just figure they should make it official before someone else asks them too and takes away the real meaning of it. Their parents are disappointed to not receive invitations, but when they see their boys together and still fighting against what happened over a decade ago to a girl they barely knew, they somehow understand why it was supposed to be private, their matrimonial joining.

They don’t have children. They’re too scared of them.

Clay wonders, that first night he and Tony have rings on their fingers, if he’d have married Hannah, had she lived. He looks over at his husband, asleep and drooling on the pillow, and thinks that no, he probably wouldn’t’ve.

Not because he didn’t love her. Because he did.

He knows that doesn’t make any sense.

 

**13.**

 

The thirteenth year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay visits his old town alone. And all the spots on Hannah’s map, which he still carries everywhere with him, folded in his pocket, old and torn and taped together with visible creases from being opened and then closed so often, by him and only him.

At Rosie’s, he orders a banana and peanut butter milkshake. He likes it okay, but he’s had better.

At Crestmont, he squeezes himself into the ticket booth and wonders how he grew, but it somehow feels bigger.

At Monet’s Garden Café, he gets a hot chocolate and sits at the far table to the right. The hot chocolate is no less than perfection, so he savors it because he knows he’ll never be having it again.

He walks around and passes Hannah’s first house. Her second. Tyler’s. The party. The school. The park.

The road.

The stop sign is still there, but Clay will always have to blink to really see it, because to him, it will always not be there.

Just like _she’ll_ always not be there.

 

**1.**

 

The first year after Hannah Baker’s tapes, Clay lies awake and wonders if up in heaven, she’s watching, and if she knows just how much she ruined all of their lives by ending her own.

 

****

 

**Author's Note:**

> this made me sad (but honestly who reads that book and isn't sad??)
> 
> based off :
> 
> Wild Heart - Bleachers  
> I Believe - Christina Perri  
> Forest Fire - Brighton


End file.
